Daniel Libeskind builds on very big ideas. Here, he shares 17 words that underlie his vision for architecture -- raw, risky, emotional, radical -- and that offer inspiration for any bold creative pursuit.

Being a designer of breathtaking and sometimes confounding buildings seems almost a footnote to the amazing life of architect Daniel Libeskind.

A true renaissance man, Daniel Libeskind possesses a staggering array of creative interests -- he has been a free-verse poet, an opera set designer, a virtuoso musician. When he finally settled on architecture, it was not long (in architect-years, anyway) before he had taken the skylines of the world by storm.

His many buildings include the recently opened Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, in the deep footsteps of his acclaimed design for the Jewish Museum Berlin -- his first major building project, and one of the most visited museums in Europe. He also created the spectacular extension to the Denver Art Museum (completed in 2006), and construction is under way on a massive retail complex on the strip in Las Vegas.

Libeskind's ambitious and highly controversial design for the rebuilt World Trade Center is perhaps his most well known project, and despite almost a decade of political wrangling and bureaucratic whittling, he insists that the final design will retain the spirit of his original renderings.